It is Monday morning and I am completely exhausted and utterly disgruntled about this past weekend and why? Because I failed to actually enjoy parts of it and the way I reacted to things this weekend is a symptom of a great problem: The inability to control my mind.
I won't go into details about what happened but suffice it to say that I reacted to things poorly and although it should have been a fun weekend, even a special weekend, I really feel terrible today about how I acted and how I feel about that today.
Struggling to get back on track I watched a documentary about the "Buddha", or enlightened one. The thing about the "Buddha" is that after all of his searching for a solution from suffering, which he achieved, the fact remains that we are humans living in a world full of troubles and one of the most troubling things about life is that we as humans have emotions, thoughts, trained responses, cultural brainwashing, and these only serve to confuse us and make us victims of our lives and not the force that rises above it. Even the "Buddha" couldn't escape being human.
I have always wanted to be devoid of negative emotions and have often wondered what this illness I have is. But it is not an illness but an unescapable condition called "The Human Condition."
These negative emotions have completely taken over my personality. I could blame it on a thousand factors, or even a couple, but it won't matter because they aren't going away and no matter where I go I will be taking everything with me. I am really sorry that I am so negative. It is not my actual nature to be that way.
So, here I am on Monday morning trying to recover from it all by writing about it. I find writing to be a good way to confess one's insanity and maybe talk myself into a good state of mind.
I am so fragile. A little tiny fly could knock me off of my feet and it would feel like being run over by an elephant. At this moment I am on the ground, smashed under the weight of that elephant which is only the size of a fly.
There are some wisdoms I learned from the Buddha Documentary. One of the stories has something to do about a glass sitting on a table. You can drink clear cool water out of this glass and when the sun shines through it the kaleidoscope of colors radiating from it are beautiful. Then one day, I happen to accidentally knock the glass off of the table on onto the floor and it breaks. Then I will be sad, and disturbed that the glass is broken and know that it is gone forever and I can never get it back. The wisdom behind the story is a metaphor for life. The lesson to be learned is that life is like a glass and there will come a time when it gets knocked off of the table and will cease to exist. The fact is, if you know that the glass is already broken, then you will learn to appreciate it even more while it is still whole.
We are already dead. Doesn't it make sense to value every day even more while we are alive? Events come and go in our lives. They pass through our lives and we react to them one for one and when we aren't prepared to handle these events, we can be thrown way off course when something happens to us. My condition is that even though I know these things, I fail constantly to implement them into my own life.
It isn't that I am not fortunate and grateful for the life I have, I am. What I am completely dissatisfied with is myself in practically every area of life. I have been given so much and I can't figure out why I am performing so poorly. It is like I am at battle with the entire world. It feels like I am playing a character in the wrong film. Nothing is working and I have nobody else to blame but myself.
It seems like the place to begin is with my mind and to clean out the cobwebs, get my mind into a proactive state, know that the world is a mess and that I have no control over it and to practice tuning into consciousness first thing in the morning and all through the day. It is like creating a forcefield around the mind so that when things from the outside hit it, they are destroyed and don't get into my mind. I see the world, I hear the world, I feel the world, but I shall practice to not let the world disturb my peace, to steal my consciousness, and to create disturbing emotions within me.
I have to accept that I will feel anger, hate, envy, sadness, grief, and whatever else negative emotions I have buried deep within me. The goal isn't to avoid and not have those emotions, but is to use those emotions as reminders that I am human, normal, and fallible.
The question is how to experience the positive emotions in life, because right now, I am not feeling those at all.
If the goal of life is happiness, and I believe it is, then the path towards happiness is the only way to get there, because as the saying goes, "The journey is the the goal."
I don't believe in rules that govern behavior because following rules is a life of constriction. I believe that behavior should be guided by living life in a spiritual way. We should live a life of intention and not a life of prevention.
As I sit here typing on this blog I realize that everything we do in life is the practice of a habit, and the developing of habits. We do life, and we can either do it from a place of happiness or from a place of negativity. In doing, I will try to do with my thoughts connected to a meditative practice. I believe the Shakers said it best, "Put your hands to work and lift up your hearts to God."
We are all alone on this pilgrimage called life. We cannot expect others to be on our pilgrimage with us, nor can we be on theirs. We must all allow everyone to have their own pilgrimage.
Right now I am completely lost. I will try to meditate and get to work on tasks keeping my mind on the present moment.